As design goes, I guess most people would prefer MAC. I worked on both during my study years and I must admit that even if I am dedicated to the PC (thus Windows), MAC is more friendly design wise.

Mostly because of how the desktop works with all programs and you can easily navigate trough them and connect everything pretty well.

However with Windows 7, I don't think it is that bad anymore working on that as far as designing goes. XP was a fucking nightmare though :p

Biggest advantage I found using a MAC is the multiple desktop switching and that everything (programs) you are running can be viewed in a nice neat overview by using a shortcut. This works really well when using Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Bridge and After Effects in one session to create a video or something :)

I don't know what specific arguments he has, but XP pre-service pack 2 was a nightmare. I still used 2000 for a long time after XP was released. Also, even after service pack 2, there was still a huge problem of XP bloat, which after some time, performance would get worse and worse.

Regarding design, I would say that the OSX workspace and performance would be far better than XP, unless you took to doing some modding.

Most modern (intel) hardware is compatible. I've already done it on 3 machines. The first time was a bitch, second time was easier, last time was incredibly easy, the only thing that didn't work was the cd rom (Which I probably could have figured out to get working if I was bothered)

You might as well try it if you don't want to buy new hardware. Otherwise just buy everything from the compatible list.

They aren't any easier to use, they just generally have less problems because of standardized hardware and software. PC and Mac both have their good and bad points. OSX is pretty awesome (Hardware is expensive - although MBP 10 hour battery is sexy), but I would need to use it in a 2 pc solution, since obviously I still like to play games, and it's too much of a hassle to restart if you want to do anything. Some stuff for development is pretty awesome, and if you like anything to do with sound and recording, you practically need to use a mac.

Yeah I phrased it a bit wrong I guess. It's not really easier to use, it's just they don't die much or have problems because nobody bothers making problems for them. I use them a lot in music stuff because you just plug stuff into them and it works straight away whereas on a PC you have to configure, sync etc etc etc and it's a pain in the ass.

Mac OS is the dumbest piece of shit ever, as far as user interface goes.. everytime i had to use the Mac station at work i felt like travelling in a parallel universe where people are even more retarded

I've been studying art / graphic design and now illustration for a fair few years and just can't get on with macs, but virtually everyone else on the course uses them. I'm more stubborn than anything else :D

OS X is a really nice OS but if you don't really know what you're going to dev/design I'm not sure you want to bother because in performance it's not "that much better", especially looking at the price difference. If you want to learn more and widen your 'computerknowledge' as a whole, I recommend you go for it.

Both are just tools to get work done. I've seen great digital painters, illustrator, web designers, developers work their magic on a 'PC' just as well as a Mac.
Having worked with both systems I personally see no major advantage in either systems.
If the programs really work better for you and you have the money to spend, why not?

i am going to quit gaming soon just because i am getting oooold. i was going to get a laptop and ditch this tower. really all i am going to use my laptop for is surfing the web,youtube, and watch some ql streams when tournys roll around. but can't make up my mind on a laptop mac or sony vio

I was that typical anti apple retard about 3 years ago but then I started using one (for design and music) and now I see how stupid and silly I was before. Sure I was still a "gamer" back then while doing design and music on a windows PC but since I don't game anymore except for SC2 I can't see a reason for going back to a windows PC again any time soon.

Windows 7 is a good os, it's definately not worse than OS X.
Also Ubuntu is getting better and better it seems, they have now a desktop manager unity ... I also saw recently Gnome 3, which also seems to make a good impression ... but both are still very young technologies, will take some time until they are really ready-to-use,
probably right now many people changing to these new technologies are getting highly frustrated ... but that's good for me, when I will use the new Ubuntu maybe in 6 months, the frustration and waste of energy of many new adaptors of ubuntu will have prepared a good os for me to install and use :-)

the only unixes I only used so far were FreeBSD and Ubuntu and they both came with gnome ... I think there are many haters of KDE on the net, it's slow and too windows-like or something, so I never bothered to try it out ... but it might be good too ...

been a while since I used Ubuntu + KDE, but last time I did it kinda sucked. less of an KDE4, more of an ubuntu problem. I can definitely recommend archlinux + KDE4 though! had no sound on BSD so gave up on that one :) and currently using win7 for cba mode :-<

installed hackintosh 2 years ago
macs are easier to use (problems wise, once you know to handle the OS)
but overall if u are a geek mac gives you lesser possibilities to try a lot of stuff (for example software database for mac is not as big as software for pc); I still do think that specific-work oriented mac is better, because the UNIX at its core

also there is the directx issue on mac (emulators does eat a lot of processing power and usually do come with incomplete instructions)

saying that mac users are retarded is kinda stupid -there are smart people and idiots who does use mac and pc -statisticaly speaking, the number of retards who use pcs is bigger

from the engineering point of view, MAC is more organised, more modular, unlike the mess you got in windows, talking abt the software and the conectivity between the OS and hardware; did not have the occasion to use a MAC HW based machine, but common sense say that from here things just run better and better

macs are only for posing twats. they're good but so are pc's but the one main difference is price. why pay a shit load more for the same, retarded. they also shit over open source, yeah its open source but generally the big guys if they use stuff they give a little back - apple don't.

just read that apple is most valuable brand in the world ...
so lol ... as if they had something unique that could held away their competitors ... then apple is out of fashion, they're out ...
cuz it's really only fashion why people buy apple ... it's not like their products had any key technology making them superior to their competitors ... it's just fashion similar to puma some years ago ... in about 5 years apple will just be another company like puma ... they're still good, but the desire to want such a product no matter what of most people won't be there anymore ...

Apple was founded only one year after Microsoft and had a leading role in the graphic-design sector for a long time (Illustrator was developed for MAC-PCs first and during the first ~5-10 versions the MAC-Illustrator had much more functions than the Windows-Programm). So Apple is not famous only because of the trend-hype, but the trend-hype is the factor that makes it much more famous in the lifestyle-sector (iPod, iPad, iPhone) than companies from the same market (Samsung, Nokia, SonyEricson etc.).

Windows for gaming is a must. No discussion here, you just can't play most games on a MAC.

For Graphics/Web-Design, Music-Engineering, Movie-Cutting and other technical stuff, it depends on what you started with, I allways used Windows and I simply can't get used to how MAC works, but here it is really a matter of taste/opinion. However it is a fact, that MAC is used more in the jobs mentioned above.

For showing of that you are a ritch trendy bitch, definitely MAC with it's fancy white keyboard-lack style and the super-stylish desktop.

I had a Mac until recently. Mac is nice/simple to use. Good if you don't do much intensive stuff. However lots of compatibility issues. It is quite annoying to have to work around the compatibility issues. Also, I think the Mac hardware is a bit poorer quality (since Apple is the only supplier of Mac computers and picks the hardware and therefore less competition = lower quality). My Macbook Pro had many, many issues in only 4 years of use. My keyboard died, pixels died, screen brightness faded, had issues with wireless connectivity, and just a couple days ago my video card died.

The sad thing is that I never really used my Macbook like a laptop. I kept it on my desk and treated it well and it still managed to have so many damned issues.